How a Staffing Agency Can Help During Recession

The U.S. economy is quite weak and no one seems to be able to accurately forecast when it will rebound.  Of course, the economy is tied to the pandemic, so who knows when a cure will be discovered and how long after the financial ecosystem will return to normal – if ever.

Businesses would like to find out what is the best way to deal with an extended recession. One way is by changing their recruitment strategy, knowing how the job market is likely to change. It is also necessary to plan to deal with the recession, while continuing hiring top rated talent.Staffing-Agency-Help-During-Recession

 

Reviewing Recruitment

Most business owners review the workers they require regularly and are aware of how many employees have to be hired and the expenses involved. To deal with the recession, it is important to be even more careful while hiring and accurately determine staff required at present and in future under different scenarios – positive and negative. This implies that a plan for talent acquisition should be created, which is based on the forecast for the business for the next few years.

It is important to understand how required staff will change during a longer recession. It is important to know which positions are crucial for the business, so that the budget can be adjusted without affecting essential staff. Businesses should also become more creative in finding new ways to fill the vacancies, like hiring a staffing agency to help with recruitment or promoting existing members of the team. In addition to reducing expenses, the results of the team are likely to improve since promoted employees are more engaged and productive.

Predicting Changes in the Job Market

At present the job market is fairly confusing and there may be major changes if economic conditions worsen further. If job security reduces, employees are less likely to resign from their current job and opt for new unknown opportunities. As a possible template, the SHRM study of the 2008 recession highlighted some of main findings for businesses. It is important to have enough staff, while ensuring that the morale and engagement of these employees is high. Though 55% of the businesses indicated that they had reduced their employee count to cut costs, yet 76% also had invested resources for training their teams to increase the productivity and skills. While reducing expenses is essential during a recession, that should be combined with policies for increasing employee retention and satisfaction in the long term.

Recruitment Strategy during Recession

A business should decide the skills, experience and profile of the employees who are essential, even if the staffing budget has reduced due to the recession. After this the business should finalize its strategy for recruitment. It is advisable to decide the most important positions for the organization, and other positions which may be filled, if the budget is sufficient. This will help ensure that the business hires only the most essential employees first, and the company can reduce its expenses, without adversely affecting business targets.

Single Staffing Agency for Efficiency and Budget Control

When the essential positions are finalized, the business should try to optimize the process of hiring so that expenses are reduced. One way is to use a single staffing agency for all the recruitment activities instead of using multiple staffing firms. The business can negotiate a better deal with the staffing agency to reduce expenses. After this a timetable for implementing the strategy should be finalized, so that the recession affect is alleviate for the business. Being unprepared for a recession leads to reduced profits. Hence it is important to plan ahead to protect the morale of the employees and the company, so that the business survives this recession.

Improve Your Recruiting Strategy with the Help of Flexicrew Staffing

Want to improve your recruiting strategy even further? Call Flexicrew to help create and implement your recruiting strategy to help you attract top talent as long as this recession lingers.

How to Hire the Right Employee in a Downturn – Are Your Recruiters Making these 5 Mistakes?

Tens of millions of people in America lost their jobs and were unemployed because of the Coronavirus pandemic. While the number of unemployed has decreased to some extent recently, the labor market conditions keep changing. With the number of Covid-19 infections in many industry sectors, states still increasing, it will take some time for the economy to stabilize. However, though there may be millions of qualified candidates available, employers cannot afford to make a mistake while hiring a skilled worker, just because the hiring manager or employer requires a talented worker urgently.

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Challenge

“There is no natural mechanism today to match the people being laid off to the available job openings. As a result, the time lag between when people with transferable skillsets are laid off and then hired is too long, winding and unwieldy with an uncertain outcome. The wasted time costs the individual, the nation’s taxpayers, and the national response to this pandemic.” Michael B. Horn in Forbes April 9, 2020

Every company requires some top notch employees so that the business functions smoothly during a recession, and is able to prevent a disastrous decline in revenues or worst case, bankruptcy. Hence the employer should hire enough essential staff.

Currently there are a very large number of unemployed people looking for work, so many employers are finding the process of interviewing them and weeding through them to find a suitable employee a major challenge. All employers find the process of hiring new employees difficult, because if there is a mistake, the business will find that it has the wrong employee. Hence every recruiter should be aware of the mistakes frequently made when they interview job applicants and choose the right candidate for the vacant position in their organization.

Top 5 Errors in Hiring made by Recruiters

Don’t let your recruiters make the common hiring mistakes – especially during a recession.  With millions of unemployed workers to choose from the hiring decision is made harder in selecting the right talent.  This may be a good time to hire a staffing agency to help you sift through the resumes and candidates and save you lots of time to find the right job-candidate match.

1.Being Narrow Minded

Many organizations are adversely affected by the unconscious biases of the hiring manager or recruiter, resulting in unintentional discrimination. This can result in wrong decisions, resulting in the workforce not being inclusive or diverse. Some hiring managers want all their employees to be similar to them in their backgrounds, their mindset, having similar weaknesses and strengths. However, in this case there will be no diversity in the team.  Any problems in the work culture will not be rectified since a person with different strengths is required to do this. Ideally the recruiter should have an impartial attitude and consider the candidate’s qualities which will best match the job vacancy.

It has been observed that staffing agencies are more impartial compared to employers while hiring the right candidate for their clients.

2.Prejudices due to First Impression or Name of Candidate

It is observed that biases based on first impression or candidate’s name can affect recruitment, promotions and mentoring in an organization. Many organizations prefer recruiting their employees from high profile popular schools. They often hire graduates from these schools without checking their skills or abilities personally, which may be a big mistake. Additionally recruiters should also be cautious about judging a job applicant based on the negative or positive impression created initially. It seems silly to state this, but many employees can be major assets even if they are not good looking. Employers should remember that merit matters, they are not running a beauty contest.

3.Unclear Job Profile, Skillset Required

Ideally the recruiter should formulate a questionnaire for testing how capable the job applicant is, and how suitable he is for the vacant position. A pre-structured interview can be used to find out the hidden qualities of each candidate, so that the best applicant is hired. Experts claim placement agencies are quite efficient in finding the best employees for companies, conducting interviews and offering other recruitment related services since that’s their specialty all day, every day.

4.Not Checking Candidates Skills

The recruiter should check if the candidate has completed courses, gotten licenses, certifications or undergone additional training to acquire skills they will require for doing their job efficiently. If the candidate lacks the requisite skills which are required, without some employer-provided training after the employee is recruited, he may not learn everything he requires for doing the work allocated at his job, adversely affecting the new hire’s productivity may suffer for a period of time until he finished training.  Thus, with all the candidates newly available, a recruiter or staffing agency should be patient to find the qualified ‘needle-in-the-haystack.’

5.Job Profile Information not Provided to Candidates

The recruiter is expected to inform the candidates applying for a job, about the job profile, including working conditions at the business. The salary structure and work culture should also be discussed with the job applicant, so he,can judge for himself if he is a good fit. Iif he finds that this particular job is not what he is looking for. This will ensure that no effort is wasted, and the person is not dissatisfied later, when he finds out that the job profile, was not what he expected, and he does not have the skills or personality required.

Avoid These Mistakes

Be sure you limit your hiring mistakes and get the right employee, connect with a Flexicrew recruiting specialist Now!